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267 Pages·2017·1.444 MB·English
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PRIVATE LAW AND THE VALUE OF CHOICE Some say that private law ought to correct wrongs or to protect rights. Others say that private law ought to maximise social welfare or to minimise social cost. In this book, Emmanuel Voyiakis claims that private law ought to make our responsibilities to others depend on the opportunities we have to affect how things will go for us. Drawing on the work of HLA Hart and TM Scanlon, he argues that private law principles that require us to bear certain practical burdens in our relations with others are justified as long as those principles provide us with certain opportunities to choose what will happen to us, and having those opportunities is something we have reason to value. The book contrasts this ‘value-of-choice’ account with its wrong- and social cost-based rivals, and applies it to familiar problems of contract and tort law, including whether liability should be negligence-based or stricter; whether insurance should matter in the allocation of the burden of repair; how far private law should make allowance for persons of limited capacities; when a contract term counts as ‘unconscionable’ or ‘unfair’; and when tort law should hold a person vicariously liable for another’s mistakes. Volume 8 in the series Law and Practical Reason Law and Practical Reason The intention of this series is that it should encompass monographs and collections of essays that address the fundamental issues in legal philosophy. The foci are conceptual and normative in character, not empirical. Studies addressing the idea of law as a species of practical reason are especially wel- come. Recognising that there is no occasion sharply to distinguish analytic and systematic work in the field from historico-critical research, the editors also welcome studies in the history of legal philosophy. Contributions to the series, inevitably crossing disciplinary lines, will be of interest to students and professionals in moral, political, and legal philosophy. General Editor Prof George Pavlakos (Antwerp and Glasgow) Advisory Board Prof Robert Alexy (Kiel) Prof Samantha Besson (Fribourg, CH) Prof Emilios Christodoulidis (Glasgow) Prof Sean Coyle (Birmingham) Prof Mattias Kumm (New York and Berlin) Prof Stanley Paulson (St Louis and Kiel) Prof Joseph Raz (Columbia Law School) Prof Arthur Ripstein (Toronto) Prof Scott Shapiro (Yale Law School) Prof Victor Tadros (Warwick) Editorial Assistant Triantafyllos Gouvas (Antwerp) Recent titles in the series Volume 4: Hannah Arendt and the Law Edited by Marco Goldoni and Christopher McCorkindale Volume 5: The Logic of Autonomy: Law, Morality and Autonomous Reasoning Jan-R Sieckmann Volume 6: Law and Authority under the Guise of the Good Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco Volume 7: Shared Authority Dimitrios Kyritsis Private Law and the Value of Choice Emmanuel Voyiakis OXFORD AND PORTLAND, OREGON 2017 Hart Publishing An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Hart Publishing Ltd Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Kemp House 50 Bedford Square Chawley Park London Cumnor Hill WC1B 3DP Oxford OX2 9PH UK UK www.hartpub.co.uk www.bloomsbury.com Published in North America (US and Canada) by Hart Publishing c/o International Specialized Book Services 920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, OR 97213-3786 USA www.isbs.com HART PUBLISHING, the Hart/Stag logo, BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Emmanuel Voyiakis 2017 The author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. While every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of this work, no responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of any statement in it can be accepted by the authors, editors or publishers. All UK Government legislation and other public sector information used in the work is Crown Copyright ©. All House of Lords and House of Commons information used in the work is Parliamentary Copyright ©. This information is reused under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 (http://www. nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3) except where otherwise stated. All Eur-lex material used in the work is © European Union, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/, 1998–2015. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-84113-886-2 ePDF: 978-1-50990-283-5 ePub: 978-1-50990-284-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Voyiakis, Emmanuel, author. Title: Private law and the value of choice / Emmanuel Voyiakis. Description: Oxford [UK] ; Portland, Oregon : Hart Publishing, 2016. | Series: Law and practical reason ; volume 8 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016037917 (print) | LCCN 2016038124 (ebook) | ISBN 9781841138862 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781509902842 (Epub) Subjects: LCSH: Private law. | Civil law. Classification: LCC K600 .V69 2016 (print) | LCC K600 (ebook) | DDC 346—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037917 Typeset by Compuscript Ltd, Shannon To find out more about our authors and books visit www.hartpublishing.co.uk. Here you will find extracts, author information, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters. To my beloved parents Για τους αγαπημένους μου γονείς vi Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Aditi Bagchi, Hugh Beale, Jacco Bomhoff, Neil Duxbury, Andromachi Georgosouli, Peter Jaffey, David K ershaw, Stuart Lakin, George Letsas, Katie Nixon, Dan Priel, Helen Reece, Prince Saprai, Nick Sage, Sandy Steel, Andy Summers, Victor Tadros, Leah Trueblood and Charlie Webb for their comments on earlier work on which this book is based. I am also grateful to the audiences and the convenors of the Contracts Section of the 2012 Association of American Law Schools Annual Confer- ence, the 2014 Private Law and Moral Values Conference at King’s College London, the 2014 UCL Private Law Theory Group, the 2015 Legal and Political Theory Workshop at NUI Galway, the 2015 Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group, and staff seminars at Brunel Law School, LSE Law Department and Warwick Law School. I owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Hart who agreed to take on an ‘iffy’ project, to George Pavlakos who proposed its inclusion in the Law & Practical Reason series and offered most valuable guidance during its d evelopment, and to everyone in the Hart Publishing editorial team for all their wonderful work. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...........................................................................................vii Introduction .................................................................................................1 1. Private Law and the Burden of Repair .................................................9 I. Original Burdens and Burdens of Repair ..................................12 II. A ‘Direct’ Account of the Burden of Repair .............................14 III. The Significance of Wrongfulness .............................................16 A. Derivativeness and Priority .................................................17 B. Continuity and Doing the ‘Next Best Thing’ .....................19 C. Rights ..................................................................................22 D. Agent-relativity ...................................................................24 E. ‘Getting Even’ .....................................................................27 F. Distribution .........................................................................32 IV. Repair Without Wrongfulness or Corrective Justice...................34 2. Responsibility, but the Right Kind ......................................................39 I. Substantive and Attributive Responsibility .................................41 II. Private Law Principles as Allocations of Substantive Responsibilities ...........................................................................46 III. Some Implications of the Attributive/ Substantive Divide ......................................................................48 A. No Carry Over ...................................................................48 B. ‘Basic’ Responsibility...........................................................52 C. Agency ................................................................................56 IV. A Progress Report .......................................................................65 3. Choice and Responsibility ...................................................................68 I. The Value of Choice and the Asymmetry between Benefits and Burdens ..................................................................71 II. Making a Choice vs having a Choice .........................................77 III. Two Sets of Objections ..............................................................86 IV. From the Value-of-choice Account to Models of Private Law ............................................................................92 A. Basic Responsibility and Agency Accounts .........................94 B. Accounts of the Burden of Repair .....................................96 C. A Possible Accommodation? .............................................101 D. Cost-based Models ............................................................104

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